Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: Fallout from a fatal plane crash in Beijing ripples through the security state, a Chinese billionaire is sentenced to 30 years in U.S. prison, and Chinese artificial intelligence models close the U.S. lead on cybersecurity.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: Fallout from a fatal plane crash in Beijing ripples through the security state, a Chinese billionaire is sentenced to 30 years in U.S. prison, and Chinese artificial intelligence models close the U.S. lead on cybersecurity.
Beijing Plane Crash Fallout
Last Friday, a small plane struck the CITIC Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Beijing and the headquarters of the state-owned CITIC Group, killing the pilot and injuring 13 others.
The incident immediately raised questions about how the plane was flying through one of the world’s most controlled airspaces in the first place. China’s airspace is heavily restricted, with more than 70 percent of it under military control.
The skies over Zhongnanhai, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership compound, are especially sensitive. During construction of the CITIC Tower, officials reportedly worried that visitors to its observation deck—only a few miles from Zhongnanhai—might be able to observe activities inside the complex.
Although the Chinese government acknowledged the crash and confirmed the pilot’s death, there has been almost no coverage of it in official media, and censors are working to scrub discussion of the incident from social media.
The worst-case explanation for Beijing is that this was a deliberate attack. Acts of suicidal violence occur periodically in China, even in the heavily policed capital, from the bulldozer driven into a crowded market this year to the 2013 car attack in Tiananmen Square. Competing narratives often accompany the aftermath, assuming the public learns much about the incidents.
In 1994, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) lieutenant killed at least two dozen people, including an Iranian diplomat, in a shooting spree. Authorities said he was disciplined for beating a subordinate prior to the attack, while dissidents said the gunman was driven to violence after his wife was forced to undergo an abortion while seven months pregnant in accordance with China’s one-child policy.
And in 2001, five members of Falun Gong, the religious movement that the government had banned in 1999, set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Unlike most acts of protest, the incident received extensive state media coverage and was used to justify an expansion of the already brutal crackdown on the group.
My suspicion, however, is that the explanation for last week’s plane crash lies not in protest but in privilege. One feature of authoritarian systems is that status is often demonstrated by flouting the rules.
For example, large dogs were banned in parts of Beijing under a 2006 regulation. Yet during the early 2010s, Tibetan mastiffs became a status symbol among wealthy elites, signaling that one did not have to worry about being stopped by police. (The fad quickly ended after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on conspicuous consumption, and many dogs were abandoned.)
This sense of privilege extends to the skies. Private planes are rare in China compared with United States, meaning those who fly them are often very well connected. It would not be surprising if certain civilians were occasionally allowed into PLA airspace as a result of China’s endemic military corruption.
The image of an aircraft hitting a building inevitably evokes the memory of the 9/11 attacks, but the vast majority of such crashes are accidents. Without ruling out the possibility of a deliberate act, the more likely explanation is that a wealthy pilot obtained permission to fly over Beijing for sightseeing before a mechanical failure or pilot error caused the crash.
If that proves to be the case, the political consequences will be severe for whoever bent the rules. There is almost certainly a political struggle going on within city leadership over who will be held responsible for this incident.
China has reportedly grounded private flights of light fixed-wing aircraft for now, but whatever investigation lies ahead will likely spell tough times and tighter restrictions for China’s private aviation industry.
What We’re Following
Chinese billionaire sentenced. Guo Wengui, a tycoon who fled China and eventually sought asylum in the United States in 2017, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for fraud. Guo, a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump and ally of Steve Bannon, lured investors under the pretense that he was working to create anti-CCP platforms and promote democratic change in China.
The question now is whether Trump will pardon him. During the president’s first term, Guo’s presence in the United States was the subject of intense debate within the Republican Party, with some lobbyists pushing for his deportation while others portrayed him as a courageous dissident and champion for democracy.
A similar debate will likely unfold this time. Beijing, which aggressively seeks to exert influence over members of the Chinese diaspora, is likely to press the Trump administration against any pardon.
Victor Mair dies. Sinologist Victor Mair, a renowned academic whose scholarship was deeply influential in both Chinese and Central Asian studies, died on Sunday at 83. Born in 1943, Mair began his career as a scholar of Buddhism before expanding more broadly into Asian languages and culture.
The remarkable breadth of his interests, from the Tarim mummies to the CCP’s linguistic iniquities, is perhaps best reflected in the Sino-Platonic Papers, the eclectic series he founded and edited for decades.
FP’s Most Read This Week
Tech and Business
Factory growth. This month brought a rare spot of good news for the Chinese economy: Factory activity has returned to expansion, just barely. Manufacturing is benefiting from the artificial intelligence boom, including surging global demand for compute power as well as the growing domestic market.
However, that is placing increasing strain on China’s electricity grid, prompting the government to coordinate AI development more closely with power production.
AI security risks. China’s newest AI models are reportedly approaching the cybersecurity capabilities of their Western competitors. News of these advances coincides with the Trump administration’s partial reversal of its restrictions on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models last Friday.
For years, U.S. policymakers have worried that AI could give China a decisive advantage in cybersecurity. Beijing, however, will also be reluctant to allow the Chinese public access to powerful tools that could be turned against the government.
